UNC, Virginia Tech to Partner With Defense on Leadership

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Virginia Tech will host a fellowship for senior military officers after the Department of Defense ended its partnerships with the highly selective private universities that used to house the program, Bloomberg reported.

The Senior Service College Fellowship is a leadership-development program for senior military officers. The department will partner with UNC to develop a new version of the fellowship, and more partner institutions will be announced in the future.

Both UNC and Virginia Tech have long-standing ties with the military. “The program fits well within the context of our mission of service, and we take tremendous pride in our deep, longstanding relationship with the United States military,” UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts said in a statement.

Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cut off the Pentagon’s relationship with several institutions of higher ed that he called “woke breeding grounds of toxic indoctrination,” including Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ending all graduate-level professional military training, fellowships and certification programs at those institutions.